The scheduled May 8 adjournment of the Colorado General Assembly’s 2024 session is leaving a lot of people wondering on the fate of legislation up until then.

The story you are reading now was posted on April 29 and will appear in the October 2 newsletter, by which time some of the following issues might have been decided.

NFIB is lobbying against three bills particularly harmful for small businesses:

• House Bill 1014 would expose more businesses to frivolous lawsuits by expanding the state’s deceptive practices laws.

• House Bill 1075 would require the Colorado School of Public Health to conduct a thorough study on the implementation of a single-payer health-care system in the state that has already been rejected by voters because of enormous costs.

• House Bill 1245 would effectively shutout non-union companies from competing on any of the state’s broadband projects funded by the Colorado Broadband Office.

Victories

NFIB is happy to report on three victories for small business during this session, one of which was victory by defeat.

• House Bill 1041 streamlines the process for the filing of sales taxes, which NFIB has fought a decade for and which was passed by the Legislature and signed by the governor.

• Senate Bill 023, complementary to HB 1041, require that local taxing jurisdictions hold harmless vendors that rely on erroneous data in certain electronic systems related to sales and use tax that are managed by the department of revenue. SB 023 was passed by the Legislature and signed into law by the governor.

• Senate Bill 159 would have ceased awarding new oil and gas permits. Backed by a poll of the NFIB Colorado membership showing a 98% opposition to SB 159, NFIB was able to help kill the bill.

Property Tax Relief

The big question closing out the 2024 session is will homeowners see some property tax relief that doesn’t eliminate their TABOR refunds. NFIB led the way in the defeat of Proposition HH last year and will do so again to preserve TABOR.